Teeth(54)

I don’t even know why I was willing to believe I wasn’t imagining him, looking back. I guess I was just as lonely as he was.

He breaks me out of my thoughts. “It’ll never work.”

No. It has to work. It has to work because I have to fix something, and if I have to see his body bruised and writhing and not breathing ever again, I . . .

I need to never see him again. The ghost is leaving me.

I swallow and say, “Why not? I can fix it. Whatever the reason is, I’ll fix it.”

He shakes his head hard, his hands creeping toward his ears. “Rudy, I can’t. No no no. I can’t leave the fish. I can’t.”

I was ready for this. “Yes, you can.”

He keeps shaking his head, harder and harder. He’s whimpering like he’s in pain.

I have to fix it. “You have to leave the fish. You can leave the fish.”

He’s still shaking his head.

“No. Listen to what I’m saying.” I take his hand off my shoulder and squeeze it as hard as I can. “Look at me. Listen to my words.”

He stops moving. Completely. It’s like every muscle in him is listening.

I touch his cheek because, for a minute, I absolutely have to. It’s automatic.

I look right into his ugly eyes. I need to choose every word really carefully, or this isn’t going to work. This is like casting a spell, but if I really knew how to do it, I would have whispered it to myself years ago.

God, I need to get this right. Today, for him.

I say, “You can leave the fish. I am standing here, telling you you can leave the fish.”

He swallows. He wants to say something but he doesn’t know what. “But—”

“No. You may leave the fish. You can. No one will blame you. The fish will not blame you. You have to do this. I will not look at you and think you’re a bad brother. Nobody will. You have to leave because this time you have to save yourself. The fish and me, we’re kicking you out.”

“But—”

I hold my finger up to his lips. He flicks his eyes down to look at it.

“You’re absolved,” I tell him.

He brings his eyes back up to mine. There’s no f*cking way he knows what that word means. That’s a word I dream someone will say to me.

So I put it in his language. “You’re free.”

There’s this long minute where all I hear are the waves.

He wants to argue and say he doesn’t want this. He wants to pretend this isn’t exactly the opportunity he would have died for. That the real reason he needed a friend outside his family wasn’t so he could hear these words.

You are no longer responsible. You are no longer allowed to give a shit. Nobody can need you ever again. Go.

All he can say is, “You’ll take care of them?” His lips are chapped against my finger.

I was ready for that too. “I will.”

“Promise?”

My poor f*cking fishboy. “Promise.”

Then he shakes his head a little, shaking my finger off. “It still won’t work.”

Fuck. He’s used up all my reasons. “Why not?”

“’Cause boats are for humans.”

I’m about to smack him across the face, I swear to God, but then he grins at me. He’s kidding.

“I hate you sometimes,” I say, “you know that?”

The grin slips off. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine here. They have no idea I was with you.” I hadn’t really realized this. “Diana didn’t tell. I was in the marketplace today, and nobody knew. They’re not coming after me. She didn’t tell . . . ”

“Saint Diana.”

“Yeah.”

“But I mean what about . . . you and me.”

Oh.

There are a million things to say. And now I’m willing to talk about it. Maybe I always was, or maybe I can only do it because he’s going away and I know I won’t have to face it. But here I am wishing we’d talked about it when we had time.

Because Teeth, okay? Just . . . Teeth.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he says.

“Maybe . . . maybe there are more of you out there.”

We both know that’s bullshit. The rest of the world doesn’t have magical fish. Or any miracles, really.

“Look.” I take a deep breath and say the only thing that will make us both sleep tonight. “I think this is the part where we stop pretending we’re not going to see each other again.”

He grins even bigger. He believes me. I close my eyes and let myself believe it too, even if it’s just for this second.

His voice makes me open my eyes. “I can’t believe you’re saving me again,” he says. “I am so f*cking pathetic.”

“Pathetic, huh?” He learned that word from me.

“Yeah. It’s like the opposite of a fish, right?”

“You got it.”

He says, “But it is really whatever, you know? You’ve saved me way more times. And we call ourselves friends.”

It doesn’t matter what we call ourselves, really. “You already saved me,” I say.

“That was nothing.”

“I’m not talking about the cave.”